Another Nirbhaya Rapist Akshay Thakur Files Mercy Plea As Delaying Tactics Continue

Akshay Thakur has become the third convict in the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case to file mercy plea before the President of India.

Akshay filed a mercy petition to President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday, minutes after Home Ministry officials confirmed that President Kovind has rejected the clemency plea by Vinay Sharma, another convict in the Delhi gang rape case.

So far, out of the four death row convicts, three have filed for a presidential pardon. Out of these two have already been rejected, leaving Pawan Kumar Gupta the only convict to have not sought clemency yet.

The first to file the mercy plea was Mukesh Singh, followed by Vinay and now Akshay.

After the President rejected his mercy plea Singh had filed a petition in the Supreme Court arguing that the due process was not followed and he was tortured in custody.

The court threw out the petition saying that if a mercy petition is expeditiously dealt with, it cannot be assumed that it has been adjudicated upon in a preconceived mind.

The court also said that alleged sufferings in prison can't be grounds to challenge the rejection of mercy petition.

Thakur filed the mercy plea on the day the four convicts were originally scheduled to be hanged. A Delhi Court had issued black warrants against the four men and set February 1 as the date for the executions.

But the four men got a reprieve on Friday, just hours before they were to be executed after a Delhi court stayed the hangings till further notice.

The convicts had argued that since Vinay's mercy plea before the president is pending, the three others also cannot be hanged.

This was the second time the execution has been postponed.

On January 7 a court had issued the first death warrant and fixed January 22 as the hanging date.

After the convicts filed the curative petitions, the date was postponed to February 1.

Earlier the SC had rejected Pawan Gupta's plea of juvenility and had held that the issue has been decided on the basis of documents and cannot be re-exercised.

The four men along with another accused, Ram Singh and a juvenile were arrested in December 2012 for the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student on a moving bus in Delhi. Ram Singh was found dead inside his jail cell in 2013 in an apparent suicide and the juvenile who was tried under the Juvenile Justice Act was released in December 2015.